Dig For Fire

All of the following albums reviewed are from the CDs I purchased. mp3 tend to be not taken very seriously. Not to mention the difference in the sound quality and the lack of cd cover design. So in order to better appreciate the music,buying the cd still seems the best way to go. While at the same time, I question the need to put out an album, why a musician has to accumulate an album-worth of material to release it? and for the so-called full-length albums to day on the market, most are only 30 to 40min long. Gone are the days, when Sarah 100 CD clocked at 82min.

I will talk a lot Russian electronic music this time. How did those Russians got to listen Western pop/rock music in the early 90’s? They got it from us, Chinese smugglers, thanks to the surplus of cut-out cassettes and CDs pouring in to China, part of those resold to the Russians.So they did not have a upper-hand in term of getting exposure to Western music. Yet why there are more and better electronic musicians now in Russia than in China? That has to go back to their music tradition, need I say, Tchaikovsky?

Although still facing the problems of distribution, recognition, more and more Russian electornic musicians have releases from a variety of UK, German, French labels. And some of them started their own label and by way of consignment to sell their CDs overseas, that’s how I got releases from the Novel 23 label “Shaped Harmonics".

boom bip :blue eyed in the red room (limited edition with bonus 3″ CD):

the lesson learned here, if you want it you have to act fast.The 500 limited edition sold out very quickly, and it barely turns up on ebay. I was fortunate to locate one in a Gemm seller. This one has much livelier osund than his previous album, though the CD cover design is similar. Boom Bip goes for more crisp beats and brighter soundscape. He backed away from the Prefuse 73-like hip-hop electronica, while concentrated on a more Dialgue-era-Four tet sound.

ambidextrous : Erroism

The very first release from Shaped Harmonics label. Long out of print, I ordered my copy from the obscure Australia elecronic label: Couchblip! which is co-founded by Robokoneko, a rare female elecotrnic musician. Ambidextrous is a math Ph.D., just like Caribou (a.k.a., Manitoba). His music is quite similar to my favorite Russian IDMist, Novel 23,

triola : Triola Im Fünftonraum (Kompakt)

Triola is another name in a long list of aliases for the German musician Jörg Burger.

His Aliases: Autobianchi, B. Movement, Bionaut, The, Burger Industries, Geometric Farms, Harlot, J. Burger, Jörg Burger, Modernist, The, Modernista ‘90, Pacific 231, Sculpture, The, Trinkwasser, White Jazz

His releases under the name, Bionaut and the Modernist already gained his enough followings in the IDM fans. Now that he changed name again, Triola’s track first appears in the Kompakt annual, Pop Ambient series, simple and beautiful, his seems prefer programmed drum sound as opposed to human drum.That’s even add more to his bassier side of sound. In the album Triola Im Fünftonraum, track 2 stands out as if it is from our Dai3 people, really, I am not kidding, when you listedn to it, you’d envision the graceful Dai3 dance.

stereo modus : Ex Tempore

Russian melodic electronica at its best, smooth melodies with pop potential.

radio dept. :

Jesus Mary Chain, My Bloody Valentine, Cure, Ulrich Schnauss all rolled into one.A very clever mix of show-gae sound with electronics.

wang lei:belleville

Had he is in Beijing, he might be more influencial to Chinese indie music scene. I don’t know wny a lot of BEijing media jst ignored him. Yet Wang Lei continues his solo journey to the place where most of his fellow Chinese rock musicians have never been. He experiments with sounds, samples, but he did not forgot melody. This made the album a nice jorney into belleville.

hammock - Kenotick

America’s anwser to Stafraen Hakon, space post-rock, they added some backing angelic female vocals here and there. Overall, moody.

birdwood : birdwood

like early Durutti Column very much, controled guitar sound meddled with some minimal electronics, definately not from an iBook.

sound sample：click here

Amalthea :: Sounds Of The Outer World

This is really a pleasant surprise. I never heard of them before, after listening to their real audio samples, I decided to order a copy. It is actually the CD reissue of the originally cassette-only release, very nicely made cardboard case with original cassette inserts on it, all in Russian.Their sound is definately retro, no glitches at all.I guess when they started in the early 90’s, not many computers are readily can be used for

sound sample：click here

cui jian : show your color

the English title apparently does not agree with the Chinese one. But that does not spoil my interest in listening to it. After some rounds, I locked myself to the track3 “Lost Season” and track 8 “38 parallele". Lost season is a rare melodic ballad, quite like the “Beijing Story” in his “Egg under the Flag” album. He sampled Guqin from Wu Na who also played GuQin in XuWei and DouWei’s albums, he added minimal electronics to bring out the mood first. The lyrics is simple, well, Cui Jian’s lyrics is always has a simple cut deep way of pushing people’s mind. At the middle of the song, Liu Yuan is mixing in his Xiao, it’s so hauntingly beautiful, in fact it becomes the backbone of the melody here.

Shuttle 358:chessa

If not for the weekly email update sent out by boomkat, I may never have got to know this amazing album, sure it does not hurt that boomkat has sound sample to convince me it is a great album. Then I got interested, then I want to buy it, then I went to gemm.com, found that soleilmoon records has it, then I browse the soleilmoon, then I found some more interesting cds, c.h.district for one, I then tracked down c.h.district, found his label M-tronic, went to c.h. district and M-tronic web page and found even more ear candy, the chain reaction never stops.

Boomkat described Shuttle 358 as minimal, but it does not sound minimal to me, layer soundscape with nice melody woven through it.